I am the person who posted the "Falling Apart" thread. I just wanted to start over somewhere else. I can't thank you all enough.
I think part of me has been frozen--or at least numb and unable to feel very much. It's like the room keeps getting smaller and smaller, until finally you can feel the weight of the walls threatening to collapse your lungs. I have survived largely by trying to eliminate wanting from my emotional vocabulary. Stephen Sondheim, whom I greatly admire, wrote: "If you have no expectations / You can never have a disappointment." And to an extent, that's been my creed. The certainty of disappointment has led to trying as hard as I could to eliminate expectation.
But a world entirely without expectation is very bleak indeed. It is, I suppose, a voiceless world. And as events piled up on me, I felt certain that I could no longer live such a life. The only thing I could let myself want was death. When my mind did not recoil from that thought, I knew I had to act against it or I would act on it. It was not the possibility of suicide that frightened me; it was the certainty that, given enough time, I would succeed in doing it. To look down that long tunnel without fear, to know that you are journeying quite calmly toward self-destruction, was in my case enough to get me to do something. Emily Dickinson was quite right when she said that "After great pain a formal feeling comes." Her "wooden way, regardless grown" was the path I saw before me, except that a small part of my mind whispered, "You really don't want to do this." So I posted. I was immediately ashamed of having done so, but there was nothing I could do. This board is very accommodating to a desire for anonymity--but the price is that you can't delete what you've posted.
I believe that, collectively and individiually, you have saved my life. The accumulation of good wishes started me thinking that maybe my room doesn't have to be quite so small. It's largely a matter of how you think about it.
Today--supported largely by the kindness I was shown here--I told my husband some, but not all, of what is going on. It took a lot of courage. But my harsh words notwithstanding, there was love between us once, and I admire and respect him. I was just so afraid that he would be angry, or worse, indifferent.
He cried. He said that he couldn't bear the thought that I would do this to myself, and that we would work on it together. He told me that nothing was more important to him than helping me. Most of all, he promised that from now on, I could say whatever I needed to say, and he would listen. I don't know that I have ever been so moved as watching that man's armor of logic and self-involvement crumble, and knowing that he was letting it go willingly, because it might help me.
And I think I owe him a willingness to take his words at face value. It's hard to trust him, but he wants to try. And though this sounds pathetic, I have to say it never occurred to me that he would be upset at the thought of losing me. I thought he would just write it off as a bad investment. But now I'm not so sure.
And there are the little things, too. A good joke on "The Daily Show." Being thanked at work (fortunately, it happened to be one of the three or four days a year when my work actually matters). The dog actually held it in (he is old now, and only intermittently housebroken). The fact that I have a show on the Tivo that I was interested in but haven't watched yet. Sometimes if you distract yourself long enough, the thought loses its urgency. At any rate, that's how I got through today (before talking to my husband).
I chose to identify myself by a flower that is beautiful for one day at a time. I think, right now, that's all I can manage. I hope you will share with me what is helping you. I hope that after such a precipitous entrance, I can stay. This is an amazing community, and I am grateful to have found it. I hope someday I can give back some of what I received yesterday.
daylily
